Ildikó ARDAI

1942, Budapest

textile artist

She graduated in woven textile and tapestry design from the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in 1968. Her main interest has been the connection between spinning and weaving from the start: she spins and weaves her textiles using sisal. She began using wicker for her later, spatial textile works, thus creating a brand new genre of wicker-weaving. In the 1970s she turned her attention to researching Seklerhand-woven carpets. She received the Noémi Ferenczy Award in 1998, and won the Niveau Prize for Industrial Design in 2001. She was granted a grant for artists from the National Cultural Fund of Hungary in 2018. She was awarded the Special Prize of the Cultural Foundation for Textile Arts at the 7th International Textile Art Triennial in 2021. Her works can be found in Hungarian and Transylvanian public collections.